"DASH CUNNING IS NOT AMUSED ..."

Predator Press

[DASH]

DASH CUNNING IS NOT AMUSED BY YOUR DEGENERATE MUSINGS AND FOUL LANGUAGE.

IN FACT, DASH IS NOT AMUSED BY THE MONKEY BARS AND SWING SETS HE WAS PLAYING ON THE FIRST TIME HE HEARD THOSE TYPES OF HEAD-ACHING RAMBLINGS.

AND WHILE DASH IS STILL AMUSED BY THE HORSIES AND SLIDES AND MAYBE THE WOODEN WHEEL THING WITH THE HANDLES THAT SPINS REALLY FAST --BECAUSE IT MAKES DASH FEEL SOMEHOW STRANGELY EXHILARATED, FEARFUL AND NAUSEUS AT THE SAME TIME-- HE'S STILL NOT AMUSED BY MONKEY BARS, SWING SETS, OR HEAD-ACHING RAMBLINGS.

MAYBE THAT IS WHY DASH IS IN CHARGE OF ZANE DISTRIBUTION CENTER AND THIS BLOG IS FULL OF COMPLAINING PEOPLE THAT ARE NOT IN CHARGE OF ZANE DISTRIBUTION CENTER.

IF YOU FOCUSSED ALL THAT COMPLAINING ENERGY ON DOING SOMETHING MORE IMPORTANT WITH YOUR LIVES, MAYBE YOU WOULD BE SOMETHING MORE IMPORTANT.

"What the Hell ... ?"

Predator Press

[By LOBO]

What the hell is "YELLOW 5"?

I found it listed amongst 50 other completely unpronounceable and dubious ingredients in Mountain Dew.

Fine.

... But I just found YELLOW 5 as an ingredient in my "Liquid Dial", And Liquid Dial doesn't taste nearly as good.

I find this rather distressing.

Also:

I just heard about a curious lawsuit. It seems the UNCF has concerns over the number of suspensions issued for African American students in comparison to white students. But the story also points out that Asian-American suspensions are like under 1% of the total!

Well, if that's true, then is this isn't a white versus black conspiracy: it's an Asian vesus everybody else conspiracy, right?

I tried to expose this scandal by using stupid "facts" and stuff by doing tedious "research".

Having studied the suspension rates of Asian students actually in Asia for an hour or so, I'm probably now the leading authority on it in the U.S. (Is Bush hiring consultants?) so take my word for it, I found out something rather startling.

Asian college suspensions are actually 91.6% Asian!

[... I have a headache ... ]

"To The Guy Who ..."

Predator Press

[By LOBO]

To the guy who posted the comment:

"What are you some kind of pansy communist. Use your toes if you have too you worthless piece of cow dung. You make me sick, you namby pamby little son of a bitches. I can't shoot because a zombie ate both my arms, then stick your stump in his eye, quite sitting there you little panty waste. The best part of you probably ran down your momma's ass. You make me sick. # posted by Anonymous : 5:46 AM"

... I was just wondering if you wanted a job.

... God, you would fit right in here ...

"Dear Ethan and LOBO, ..."

Predator Press

["Letter to the Editor" posted by Ethan]

Thank you for you your kind words and support.

Now, finger slashed, I am but a mere shell of a man, completely incapable of playing either X- Box or Playstation II.

I can’t shoot at anyone, videogame or otherwise!!! I just stand there helplessly in Diablo II, vainly trying to hammer out peace accords with the zombies. And everybody knows those zombies are Goddamn deadbeats!

Please fundraise or something because I definitely need to shoot somebody soon, and the current technology doesn't allow me to do it in virtual reality.

Glenn Hoek,

New Jersey

Evaluating your Boss

Predator Press

[By LOBO]

Heart's out to the poor bleeding guy getting smothered in beauracracy! My boss is a real piece of work too. He can go on for forty-five minutes about this corporate equasion he doesn't even understand.

I could explain it to him ... it's pretty simple: Once a week he pounds his statistics into a sophisticated corporate computer which calculates his labor costs versus productivity. And once a week, no matter what he reports, he gets a prompt readout saying "Wow, you almost made it this week ... !"

And he thinks I'm a moron.

Needless to say, when the annual and anonymous "Manager Evaluations" come around, I like to have a little fun as payback for getting kicked around all year.

This year's read like this:

"To: Zane Distribution Center

Re: Professional Evaluation of Dashel C. Cunning III, Outbound Operations Manager

'Meester Cunnings ees very kind man. He let us off truck and only work us for ate or 9 hours until he bring us cup water in cleant pee cup. And he let us sleep every few days.

He whip us very seldom. My back almost healed already! But I think he give my sisters very bad disease. They cannot urinate without burning sensation.

Please forwar my $31 check to my family as Meester Cunning not let us out of trailer when not working. An tell them to pray for me. A lot. I broke 3 finger so far and one has catching infection and making me hallucinate, but Meester Cunning say no penecillin in country right now, but much plenty Fanta Cola from doctor to pour on meantime.'"

Sincerely, Flandsa Ha’asasanba.


Handwrite it with your off-hand, so it looks really sloppy and illegible. Even if the corporates can read six words of it, your manager or supervisor will be in meetings for weeks.

... You know, out of the way ...

Predator Press

[LOBO]



Me as portrayed by two gifted
actors, swimming in gritty heroism

Preamble

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Written retrospectively on 05/20/08.

... If you're reading this, I must be dead.

Sometime in mid-2004, "Ethan" and I got very drunk and surly.

-Wait. I have to back up a little.


***
AS a single college grad, I was already burned out on the music business.

Numerous band breakups -and a staggering lack of talent- had understandably not culminated into much over the years, and I was growing vaguely aware that I was just picking at it like an old scab ... more out of habit and routine than any other reason.

Acutely attuned to the fact that "the minute you became unable to reinvent yourself is the minute you became old," I tried. Unfortunately this lead to various other bad incarnations as well; soon I found myself thousands of miles from a "home" that no longer existed, and embroiled in a crippling, spiteful divorce.

It got worse before it got better. A previously undetected broken vertebra from my youth had calcified, and for two years I wallowed in an untreatable agonizing cesspool of pain medications, depression and self-pity. I'm sure I wasn't very nice or pleasant all the time either; I remember once growling tearfully at "Ethan" -one of the few friends I had left- that "I absolutely refuse to be crippled!"

And then one day it just stopped.

I could walk.

I could sleep.

-I can't really offer a medical explanation because frankly I never looked back; I just quit the meds and useless doctor appointments and moved on. And while I have my doubts that God played a hand in my miserable existence, who knows? "Miracles" is a real word. I looked it up.

The most likely explanation, however, is that my bosses finally got wind of my injury as it was increasingly difficult to hide, and I was promptly "let go". After a few months away from the brutal physical demands of that job, I unexpectedly grew gradually healthier, had some idle time, and decided maybe hard labor's time had come and gone for me.


***
But over those two horrifying, hobbled years, besides my job I did little anyone could classify as "useful". Between fits of bitching and moaning after work I played video games and wrote a little here and there in my spare time. A Fairy Tale was drafted about then. I also tinkered with a website called High Abusive.com, but it was directionless and uninspired: the concept was to run a 24/7 webcam in an abandoned warehouse where we hosted live bands, parties, and did interviews. Or interviewed partying live bands. Whatever.

But suddenly broke, I lost permissions for the abandoned warehouse and then finally my ill-conceived and woefully underdeveloped url.

Under my own navigation, this chapter would have closed forever.


***
It was "Ethan" who repeatedly pushed me back into the pool. He said "Let's do a blog!" and so we did a blog. He said "You gotta read this guy!" and so I read that guy. Ethan, in fact, is the first poster on this blog.

But as someone who has dabbled in Journalism, I wasn't particularly impressed with "blogging" as God -at the time- intended it. I was used to more expository stuff. And heck you could say virtually anything on these websites ... !

And then something clicked.

It suddenly dawned on me that it was okay to lie here: this wasn't like newspapers, magazines or television. No one ever seemed to care when someone said something patently false.

Subsequently I decided if I was going to lie, I wasn't going to do some pansy little teeny-weenie bullshit lie: I was going to tell the biggest, most fantastic far-fetched epic boldfaced lie the Earth has ever seen.

So fine. Go and read the whole thing in order if you must. It's pretty boring at first while getting my "blog-legs", but I stand by it.

But first let me give you my caveats.

My Seven (or so) Deadly Caveats:

First: Nothing in this blog is true -except if you laugh, in which case I've stumbled into something you recognize in yourself. So if it's true, it's your own damn fault.

Second: The only thing unique here is the writing. Even the formatting was either pilfered or done at the advice of other people. And I've lifted countless pictures left and right -without permission- to illustrate some stories and posts. In advance, my apologies for this. If you see your picture used and I haven't figured out how to give you a credit, it's likely because I couldn't find you. Email me at carpenoctum at hotmail.com with "YOU THIEF!!" in the subject field, and I'll either make you happy or remove it entirely.

-Oh wait. I'm dead now. So pthhbtt!

Third: While I've certainly taken liberties with some public figures and realities as we know them, some of the stories are based loosely on 'real' circumstances. In these cases, all names were changed to protect the guilty.

Fourth: I'm a notoriously pisspoor commenter, and this blog forgives you from being the same. I'm just glad you showed up.

Fifth: No animals were harmed in the pursuit of this blog ... except maybe Phil when she got her rabies shots.

Sixth: While I fucked off, some of my current influences -the heavyweights of the "Humor Blog" spectrum such as Rob "Diesel" Kroese, Brent Diggs, Mark A. Rayner and Andy Fanton- were simultaneously on the vanguard carving niches, pioneering concepts, forging the future and doing all the hard work. At this time I was still tooling around aimlessly; the first gratuitously "funny" blog I ever followed was Fafblog!, and that wasn't until roughly late 2005.

Seventh: Don Lewis of It's A Funny Thing wasn't in the above list only because his blog is so young. I was a huge fan of his blog already, and was totally floored when I got the Quality Original Humor Award ... lil pipsqueek Predator Press was maybe getting 20 hits a week at that time.

Eighth: Terri. I most certainly would have quit before if not for my longest-running and ardent fan. She has proofed -out loud- virtually everything you have ever read here (so's my surpisingly poor spelling and writing aren't quite as evident). Further, she is a brilliant writer on her own, and helps me think of ways to "funny stuff up" when those lazy kids every once in a while fail to do so.

And I'm keeping her Don ... Don't get any "Funny" ideas ... :)

Ninth: I hope God has a soft spot in His Heart for funny mortals 'cuz I was pretty messed up. But in the words of the Deftones, "God bless you all for the song you saved us ... God bless you all on Earth."

So where were we?

Oh yeah.

The beginning.